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Corporate anti-farmer, anti-environment policies

Most cocoa workers live below the poverty line of $2 per day. With Mars, Mondelez and Nestlé sourcing more than a third of the world’s cocoa, their policies could help lift communities out of poverty and hunger! But they’re not doing enough to address inequalities faced by women cocoa farmers. This matters because it’s women who most often provide food for their families and those families in their community who are going hungry.

Use your power as a consumer to tell Mars, Mondelez and Nestlé that the women who grow and pick their cocoa deserve better – better pay, fairer treatment, opportunities for training, the chance to own the land they work, and more. Act now here.

The charity finds Nestlé, Mars and Coca-Cola fail to protect farmers, local communities and the environment

Damian Carrington

Tuesday 26 February 2013 06.00 GMT

The world’s largest food companies are failing to meet ethical standards, a report from Oxfam has warned. None of the leading global brands such as Nestlé, Mars and Coca-Cola were given good overall ratings on their commitments to protect farmers, local communities and the environment, while British food giant Associated British Foods (ABF), owner of brands including Kingsmill, Ovaltine and Silverspoon, received the lowest rating.

The charity’s Behind the Brands report compiled a scorecard, rating the “big 10” food companies in seven categories: the transparency of their supply chains and operations, how they ensure the rights of workers, how they protect women’s rights, the management of water and land use, their policies to reduce the impacts of climate change and how they ensure the rights of the farmers who grow their ingredients.

The company with the lowest score – just 13 out of 70 – was ABF. It scored just one mark out of 10 in its treatment of land, women and climate change, while the highest scores it managed to achieve was three out of 10, in relation to workers and transparency.

Oxfam said neither ABF nor Kellogg’s had addressed land rights concerns, or the poverty and lack of opportunity for women working in the supply chain, while the latter company and General Mills showed a lack of transparency in where they sourced their ingredients, only providing information on where they get their palm oil. …

Oxfam said that while all 10 companies have acknowledged the need for a more just food system and have made commitments to that end, they are still failing to take adequate steps.

“It is time the veil of secrecy shrouding this multi-billion dollar industry was lifted,” said Oxfam chief executive Barbara Stocking. “Consumers have the right to know how their food has been produced and the impact this has on the world’s poorest people who are growing the ingredients. The hundreds of brands lining supermarket shelves are predominantly owned by just 10 huge companies, which have combined revenues of more than $1bn a day while one-in-eight people go to bed hungry every night.”

The charity said ABF’s lack of transparency in its supply chain operations was a major factor in its poor overall performance as few of its brands were able to demonstrate how they do business with suppliers or enforce ethical standards. While some ABF brands, such as Twinings tea, were noted to have good policies in some areas, these were not widespread, the charity claimed. ABF’s Patak and Amoy have no public policies requiring suppliers to pay a living wage or support smallholder farmers and they fail to require their suppliers to prevent pollution or safeguard water quality, Oxfam said.

…

Oxfam said none of the companies had adequate policies to protect local communities from land- and water-grabs despite all of them sourcing commodities plagued by land rights violations, such as palm oil, soy and sugar.

It also found that while all of the companies have taken steps to reduce direct greenhouse gas emissions, only five – Mondelez, Danone, Unilever, Coca-Cola and Mars – publicly report on agricultural emissions associated with their products.

Oxfam wants the public to use social media to put pressure on the food giants to improve their policies, and on Tuesday launches its Behind the Brands campaign in more than 12 countries including China, Mexico and Brazil.

The report was discussed with and made available to the companies covered ahead of its publication.

On Thursday April 6th [2017] Peter Brabeck-Letmathe, 72 years old, attended for the last time the Nestlé General Assembly as Chairman of the Board. He worked 50 years for Nestlé, 20 years as Chairman of the Board. Nobody can deny that he is a very intelligent man and a brilliant strategist, always ready to defend his ideas in the public arena. He has been so often in films and the media in general that he became a kind of celebrity among CEOs. He and his fellow countryman Arnold Schwarzenegger, with whom he shares much in common, are probably the most well known contemporary Austrians in the world. Their views on economy and politics seem to come as a natural birth-right directly from the Austrian School of Economics, which emerged in Vienna by the end of the XIX century. According to economist Michael Hudson, the Austrian School of Economics surged as “a reaction against socialist reforms. Opposing public regulations and ownership, the Austrian School created a parallel universe in which governments did not appear except as a burden”: here.